How to make the video sharper with Premiere?

[ericl249873]

My raw footage looks sharp (you can see the detail in my skin) but the encoded version sent to Youtube looks quite blurry! Are there any resources I can use to export my footage so it looks sharper out of Adobe Premiere? Sorry I'm new at this and I tried exporting it 3 times... and this is the best I got.

[Ann Bens]

Post screenshot of export setting.

Might want to up the bitrate.

On a side note: make sure your horizon is straight.

[ericl249873]

Thanks, I will. Is 5000 bitrate good ? What's the recommended for Youtube?

[mandicreally · Accepted solution]

What format are you recording in? 1080P 30fps? 24fps? And what are you export settings?

YouTube compresses whatever you upload to it.  For 1080P 24/30fps footage their recommended Bitrate is 10mbps.  For 50/60fps footage it is 15mbps.  https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Personally I export a bit above their bitrate.  It results in significantly larger files but I feel like less is loss in YouTube's compression on their end with that.

For 1080 footage I export at 18-20MBps, kind of on a whim which I pick.  For 4k Footage I output at around 45-50 MBps as their 4k 24/30 Bitrate is 35-45.

Basically when you upload to YouTube you will ALWAYS lose some quality.  Produce a better product to send to them and you will have less chance of it ending up bad.  That said it is of course a "law of diminishing returns" thing.  If you crank up the bitrate to even what your camera is recording at for your export, you won't see a massive improvement once its on YouTube, but you will have a massively sized file.

One thing I've noticed is 4k footage just looks crisper on YouTube(duh).  By that I mean I feel that since I switched to 4k, my uploads don't seem to lose as much in the upload process as my 1080P footage used to.  I too would see some loss in the uploaded video, but the 4K seems truer to what I produced.

[excited_Genie16B8]

I prefer to export and upload DNxHD to YouTube.  I find I get a better end result compared to H.264 uploads.

[Alinaca]

Try this Adobe help tips: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/blur-sharpen-effects.html